


The End of an Era

by Drakkonis



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Angst, Major Spoilers, possibly - i'm so bad at tagging fics it's not even funny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:42:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24917044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakkonis/pseuds/Drakkonis
Summary: CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ALL BOOKS, INCLUDING SEASONS OF WAR.Take fourteen years of cumulative second-hand lassie-bashing, murdering innocents and passing it off as fun and all of your friends dying, and what do you get? Skulduggery Pleasant, apparently.A new world, a lot of hindsight and an evil scientist are all mashed together, and suddenly many new things are clear. Maybe, Valkyrie and Skulduggery were never the best for one another. Maybe, just perhaps, Ravel was right, and there's a very slight smidgen of - gasp - emotions beyond anger. Consequences do catch up to people eventually, and unlike Landy, I'm not one to serve them in the form of needless death and torture.Set after Seasons of War, welcome to my hellfic on what the Skulduggery Pleasant series should be. Yes, I'm bitter.Note: This fic is being updated on a chapter by chapter basis. If there are any major changes in the writing, they will be edited and a note explaining the edit will be added to the top of the next chapter.
Comments: 25
Kudos: 26





	1. Hindsight is 20/20, especially after fourteen years of disaster.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to hell, shitcakes. When will this be updated? Not regularly, that's for sure, but I'm actually excited for this. I'm also hoping that this can become a series of works, so fingers crossed on that one, but we'll see how things work out.

"We need to talk."

The words slipped from Valkyrie's mouth, and as soon as they had, she almost wished they'd slipped right back in. Almost. But there was still that one rebellious little piece of her that had pushed the sentence out in the first place.

For a while, Skulduggery kept his eyes - eye  _ sockets _ \- on the road, and Valkyrie was starting to wonder if he'd actually heard her when he replied, his voice lower than usual. "Yes, we do."

She'd expected several different reactions. That hadn't been one of them, but a smile forced its way onto her face, stuck there on automatic. "From the way you say that, it's like you already know what I'm going to say."

"Militsa put you up to this, didn't she?" From anyone else, it would have sound accusatory. It sounded accusatory from Skulduggery, too, but it was also… something else. Was that resignment in his voice?

Regardless, her smile slipped. "Militsa doesn't  _ put me up to _ anything, Skulduggery. We're not  _ twelve. _ " But this was something Militsa had spoken with her about, in length. "Why," she continued carefully, "has she said something?"

"She has, as a matter of fact." Another long bout of slightly uncomfortable silence, another instance of Valkyrie being just about to break it when Skulduggery spoke again. "She has some concerns about our relationship."

"Yeah." There wasn't much else she could say to that. "She does."

The concerns weren't based in jealously; Militsa had set her right on that one the very second she'd suggested it, had nearly laughed. But they were rooted in something far deeper, something Valkyrie herself had been ignoring for a long while, and it made her think.

"What did she say to you?" she prompted, keeping her eyes on the road. In the corner of her vision, she could see Skulduggery pointedly doing the same.

"She believes that us being together - my befriending you when you were younger - has lead to a somewhat unstable relationship. An unhealthy codependency, if you will."

"Younger. You mean twelve."

"From the way that you say that, one would think you agreed with her."

"Say, hypothetically, that one has thought about her thoughts a lot. That one has lain awake for the past few nights, thinking about what things could have been like if we hadn't met."

"Remarkably duller, I'd imagine."

"Remarkably safer, too."

Now Skulduggery looked at her. "You've never been one to shy away from danger."

_ Not until recently, anyway.  _ The words hung over her head, unseen and unheard. Valkyrie swallowed.

"Nope," she agreed, and it might have sounded flippant if she'd put a little more effort into it. "Because you always taught me to fire myself headfirst into danger, and worry little about the consequences."

"Things are more fun that way." The words were accompanied by a slight tilt of the head, but it wasn't quite amused. "Don't you think?"

"I did." Valkyrie shut her eyes and looked deliberately away from him, watching the pavement from the passenger-side window. She could still see him in the reflection when she opened her eyes, but didn't let it bother her. Too much. "I thought that when I was twelve, when I was stupid and when I thought things were more fun when there was danger involved. When I was being thrown up against people ten, twenty,  _ more _ times my age and experience and being told by you, a responsible, grown adult, that it was okay. That it would be  _ fun _ , that we were going to save the world and defeat all of the bad guys."

In the reflection, Skulduggery's head tilted again, very slightly. That seemed to be all of the acknowledgement she was going to get; or, at least, it as all that she allowed before powering on, willing her voice to stay calm.

"I was twelve, Skulduggery.  _ Twelve _ ."

"Practically an adult," he said with a nod, and her head snapped to him quickly, voice terse.

"No.  _ No,  _ I wasn't, and yet you let me pretend I was, and you led me on and made me think you were so cool, made me think that danger and trauma and being hurt was the only way to enjoy life. And now look where I am. Where  _ we _ are."

Skulduggery opened him mouth to answer, but Valkyrie, holding back the tremors in her voice, continued relentlessly. "The only people who ever tried to tell me otherwise were Fletcher, Militsa - hell, even Tanith a couple of times. The ones closer to my age, who realised that actually, yeah, morals still have a place in their life and-"

"Are you saying that I don't have morals?" There was something unnervingly like amusement in Skulduggery's voice, and she glared at him. Still, the expression couldn't hold, and she looked away.

"I don't know."

A few more minutes of silence, other than the purr of the Bentley's engine, and she took a breath. "You changed my life, Skulduggery."

He inclined his head in a nod, but that was all the acknowledgement her statement got.

"You came into it when I was twelve, acted as if I was so much older. Let me do that and didn't think about the consequences."

"On the contrary, I did think about the consequences."

"But you didn't care?" It wasn't supposed to sound accusatory, but to be fair, she didn't know how it was supposed to sound at all.

"Gordon was a very good friend of mine. And now, over a decade later, I've realised that by using my grief for him as an excuse for dragging ou along on my adventures was possibly not the best of ideas, as well as it worked out."

"As well as it worked out? Did you and I live the last fifteen-ish years?"

He glanced at her momentarily, then back at the road. "Apart from the trauma, of course."

"I'm a monster, Skulduggery."

"Well, so's everyone. Some of us are just more obvious about it than others."

"That's how you're putting this? So you  _ don't  _ care?"

"Did I say that?"

"You may as well have," she snapped, and this time, his glance was a little sharper. 

"You're angry with me? After all of this time we've spent together as friends, as partners, and now you're angry at me for it? Valkyrie, I-"

"Shut up." The nonchalance in his voice was really grating on her. Mercifully, for once, Skulduggery did as she said until her thoughts could be formed into words once more.

"Look, I…" A long sigh trailed from her lips, and she slumped. "I can't do this any more, Skulduggery. And I know we've tried to brush it off and we've tried to get past things, but it's not working.  _ I'm _ not working." 

Silence. She continued.

"Since I was twelve, everything has just been non-stop. Danger constantly and yeah, it was fun for a while. And then things started hurting more. This is why I went to America. You know that. You know that I couldn't take things any longer, and hell, I thought it'd be easier to start coming to terms with what I've seen, what I've done if I was away from you. And in some ways, it was. I just didn't consider that being away from you didn't mean being away from  _ everybody _ that I know and love. And you're right about some things." Dimly, it occurred to her that every muscle in her body was tense, and she forced herself to relax before continuing. To breathe and think about what she said before something stupid came out.

"You're right about my family. That I need them and vice versa. But that's my biological family. They didn't make me what I am now."

"A smart, capable woman able to face nearly everything she comes across?"

"A nervous wreck."

"That's how you see yourself?"

Valkyrie raised an eyebrow at him. "It's how I and everyone else I've met have seen me for the past few years."

"Well, don't listen to them. Simple."

"Skulduggery, the problem doesn't lie in people seeing me as a nervous wreck, because I am. The problem lies in that you dragged me into this world and allowed me to become Darquesse, to become a monster and kill over a thousand people-" He lifted a finger on the steering wheel, as if to interrupt, but she didn't stop- "and keep wallowing in my own despair and blaming myself for what happened, when it was your fault."

"You know," he mused, "while I agree I am at least somewhat to blame for what happened, I was-"

"Responsible for my wellbeing."

"Now, I wouldn't quite say that. I'm not your parents, Valkyrie."

"No, but I was around you more than I was them for all of my teenage years. When you have a child under your care, regardless of  _ why _ , you are responsible for them, Skulduggery. You should not have done that to me and you should not have, for a goddamn moment, listened to my childish whims."

"Is this you speaking, or Militsa?"

"Both. Both, because she's the one who made me realise this. She's the one that made me realise I needed a bloody therapist, not a girlfriend, that I wasn't being fair on her."

"You split up with her?" A note of surprise leaked into Skulduggery's voice, and Valkyrie shrugged.

"I need to focus on myself and my family. We're still friends. Just not dating."

"You know, tearing your relationship apart may also not be the greatest of coping methods."

"Depends on what relationship." 

His head tilted slightly. "And what do you mean by that?"

"I'm quitting. As an Arbiter, as your partner. Just… I have Gordon's money. I don't need to worry about that, and I need to take a moment to step back and work things out without completely distancing myself from everyone. I need to spend time with my family and the people that care about me without sending me off to get killed."

"I see."

She'd thought there would be more of a reaction than that, but when she looked at him, his head was tilted in that way that said he was thinking. So she waited.

"And as my friend?"

"I don't know." It hurt to say it - hell,  _ all _ of this hurt, and she was trembling with the effort of keeping her voice steady, keeping the tears from her eyes."

"Valkyrie, I love you. I'm-"

"You don't." Then, her voice  _ did _ crack, because hearing those words made her want to take back everything she'd said, made her want to sink back into the comforting familiarness of Skulduggery's friendship. And she knew, she  _ knew _ that if she turned around, seven now, and said that actually, she'd changed her mind, he'd accept it. Wouldn't push it further.

At first, she'd thought it was just because it was what friends did. Now, there was that unending jab of fear that this was more than a friendship, that this was an  _ obsession.  _

"You don't love  _ me _ . You love the power you have over me and the idea that I'm someone who you can model after you. You-" Another crack, and she scrubbed furiously at the tears leaking from her eyes. God, why now, of all times, did she have to start crying? Being a baby about it?

"You're obsessed and it's unhealthy for both of us, Skulduggery. And I can't keep doing this when I don't know if you actually care about me, when the thought of you loving me in that way is only becoming scarier by the minute. I need my family and I need the people I love without being scared of the consequences of leaving. And you're not one of those people."

A deep, shuddering breath, and her voice was so soft even  _ she _ hardly heard her next words. "I don't think you ever were."

Skulduggery didn't reply, and with a start, she realised that they were on her driveway, the car gliding to a smooth stop outside her house. Valkyrie looked at him. He didn't look back.

When she got out of the car, he said nothing, so still he could have been a statue. Usually, he never shut up, and now it was almost eerie to have him so quiet. Especially after she'd dropped such a bombshell on him.

But she shut the door anyway, saying nothing as she turned her back on the car to walk inside, vision blurry, hands shaking so badly she almost couldn't unlock her door

But she did, and she walked inside, numb and overwhelmed with everything at the same time, and sat on the couch.

She didn't move for a very long while.


	2. Vile truths, comforting lies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE.

Skulduggery had texted him ridiculously early that morning - late last night? - to ask if he would come over, to ask if they could talk about something important. Dexter hadn't replied to the text, but it was six in the morning now and he was just pulling up outside of Skulduggery's house, too exhausted mentally to pay much attention to the leaden feeling in his limbs.

When the text had come through originally - at 4:02am, to be exact - he'd considered going then and there - it wasn't as if Skulduggery would have been sleeping, after all - but he'd demonstrated some sort of restraint and lain restlessly in bed for a while longer.

He was here, now, and that restlessness had subsided, faded into numbness now. Everything had felt numb since Saracen had died.

When he switched the engine off, the silence nearly hurt. Dexter shut his eyes.

_ Get it together, Vex. _

He got out of the car, locked it as he made his way to the front door. Didn't bother knocking.

Skulduggery was in the kitchen, his head tilted at an angle Dexter couldn't quite recognise. Part of him wondered if Skulduggery had finally kicked the bucket with how still he was, until the skeleton raised his head.

"Good morning, Dexter." The greeting was quieter than usual, too, and Dexter hesitated before leaning against the counter, folding his arms.

"What happened?"

Silence.

"Skulduggery? Hello?" He resisted the temptation to wave his hand in front of the other man's skull. "You there?"

More silence, but at least Skulduggery  _ moved _ , turning away from him to look out of the window. Dexter didn't shift his gaze.

"I have spent a long, long time wondering whether or not I should tell you this. Not just you, specifically, but… the Dead Men as a whole."

Now it was Dexter who was silent, although something in his stomach flipped.

"And," Skulduggery continued after a long pause, "there's only the two of us, now. Two Dead Men. That and various other factors have made me realise that now is probably a good time for us to stop keeping secrets from each other."

Once, Dexter recalled, there was a time in which secrets got them killed. A time in which something that one of them knew, all of them knew. A time in which honesty was what kept them so close as a group, as a team. A unit.

Once, there was a time before Vile.

How Vile had changed things, Dexter wasn't entirely sure, but Skulduggery had been different when he finally made his own reappearance, years after the necromancer's vanishing. He hadn't wanted to speak about what the others assumed were endless horrors that he'd endured; hadn't wanted to do much at all. But he'd changed. They all had.

"Do you remember when Anton told us he was gay?" The words left Dexter's mouth before he could stop them, and Skulduggery tilted his head slightly.

"I do."

"First time I'd seen him look like anything other than a statue. As if we'd hate him for liking dick when he'd saved our lives hundreds of times. I think that was when we really started being honest with each other."

Skulduggery said nothing.

"What happened?" he asked, and there was a note of desperation in his voice that he couldn't quite bring himself to choke back. "What happened to us? As Dead Men?"

"Vile happened."

Dexter shut his eyes. "But why? Why did we ever let him break us? We stopped being a unit, a  _ team,  _ long before the war ended. Why did we let Vile do that?"

"Why did we let me do that, you mean?"

Dexter opened his eyes, fixed Skulduggery with a glare he couldn't quite bring himself to mean. "Don't. Whatever Vile did to you to make you vanish all of that time - that wasn't what broke us. It was Vile and it was us and it was that we let that bastard tear us apart. That bastard broke so many families and it broke  _ us  _ as a family and I'm just so fucking  _ tired _ of pretending that things were okay, and I just wish we hadn't wasted all of that time." His voice cracked towards the end, and Dexter realised that he was crying for the first time since he'd laid Saracen's body in its shallow grave. Realised that he was clenching his fists hard enough for his nails to cut bloody half-moons into his palms, that his thoughts and everything he'd been holding back for months was so overwhelming that he almost missed what Skulduggery said. 

"That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?" He wiped his tears with a shaking hand, something faintly resembling anger in the movement. Maybe.

"Vile did break us.  _ I _ broke us."

"You're not responsible for Vile, for God's sake. How could you-" 

The realisation hit him like a truck. 

Skulduggery said nothing. 

"Tell me this is a joke, Skulduggery." It was definitely anger, now, the sickening sort that boiled in his chest and made his hands shake. "You're not-"

It made sense. It made so much sense that Dexter could have hit himself, but it wasn't himself that he wanted to hit. 

Skulduggery stayed quiet.

"You're not Lord Vile, Skulduggery. Tell me I'm being stupid." His voice shook. 

"As much as I'd jump at the opportunity any other time, I'm afraid I can't do that right now."

There was a crash and Skulduggery was on the ground, Dexter's knuckles throbbing; he realised a second after it happened that he'd hit Skulduggery across the face. Hard. 

"I thought you might react like that." He didn't even sound  _ smug _ . Just defeated, and the pang of guilt in Dexter's chest was swallowed quickly by anger, but it was anger he kept reigned this time as Skulduggery stood slowly, picking up his hat. "Your hand is bleeding."

A glance at it confirmed his words true; Dexter just shook his head, swallowing down bile. " _ Why _ ?"

"I don't know."

"You- Our friends, Skulduggery, everyone. Ghastly's mother."

Silence. 

"Who else knows?"

"Valkyrie."  _ Of course _ . "China. Tanith, I believe."

" _ Tanith _ knows? You took centuries to tell me, but you told  _ Tanith _ ?"

"You  _ did _ just hit me."

" _ Of course I hit you, you son of a bitch _ !" he exploded. To Skulduggery's credit, he didn't flinch at the words, scraped and raw with Dexter's ruined throat. "You're Lord Vile, for God's sake, the monster we fought against for years, who slaughtered thousands of people without a thought! And you kept this from us?"

"I couldn't tell you."

"Why? Why, because you always keep coming back? Because you're the one who's done all of these horrific things, killed and tortured all of these people, and you just  _ don't care _ ?"

"I do care. I've spent my time since the war doing everything I could to make up for it."

"Bullshit," Dexter snarled. "That's complete and utter bull. It's always you, isn't it? Always the miracle soldier that came back, the one who everyone's afraid of. The one who gets everything."

Skulduggery said nothing. 

"Ghastly, Anton,  _ Saracen _ ," he choked out. "All of our friends are dead and it was always you that made it. My God, Skulduggery, I wish you'd stayed dead and your wife's screams were the last things you ever heard." He couldn't bring himself to regret the words as he turned to walk away, but froze as Skulduggery spoke. 

"At least I didn't murder Saracen."

Dexter forced himself to take three very, very slow breaths. Tried his hardest not to explode where he stood, but he could already feel energy building in his hands, in his eyes, boiling beneath his skin.

_ Screaming. Screaming as his mother watched his eyes light up, as Dexter too screamed, backing away. _

_ "Demon!" she screeched, and he moved faster, tears flowing from his molten eyes like lava. "I'm sorry! I don't know what's going on!" _

_ "Demon!" she screamed again. "Give me my son!" _

_ He couldn't see anything, there was just white and his entire body hurt so badly, he could smell flesh burning, and he turned and ran, ran until the energy faded and he was left sobbing with ruined eyes, his body burnt and aching and his family broken. _

That same energy built, the energy he'd spent so long controlling, but it had been  _ centuries  _ since he'd felt this angry, since he'd felt anything this sharp and powerful. Centuries since he'd had to run. 

Dexter Vex took a breath, felt that pain flooding him, and harnessed it as he walked out of the house, pulled it back inside and used it to break into a sprint as he left the house. 

Skulduggery didn't try to stop him. 

_ Hills, fields, grass. Empty space had always been comforting to him, and now it seemed emptier than ever, tears still streaming from his eyes. The throbbing, pulsing energy that writhed beneath his skin had long since subsided, but his feet wouldn't stop moving, his chest aching as he gasped for breath. _

_ The cliffs overlooking the ocean were a place he came often, to try to quell his emotions and breathe until the light beneath his skin dampened. _

_ Here, he'd considered the possibility of him being a demon many times. Now, as he fell to his knees on the cliff edge, he was certain that he was right.  _

_ Suddenly exhausted, he flipped onto his back, panting and staring at the blurry sky that stretched above him. His eyes still burned, tears leaking from them even as that dull numbness settled in his chest.  _

_ Maybe he'd lay here forever, and the cliffs would crumble into the sea, taking his body with them.  _

_ That would be nice. _

The car stopped. Dexter slipped out of the seat, still numb and shaking, and shit his eyes as he stood on the cliff.

The tang of salt hitting his nose was familiar, nostalgic, even if he stood nowhere near the place he'd come as a child. The smell of salt had always been calming. Intoxicating, almost. 

The car door was still open, but Dexter walked forwards, ignoring it to move to the edge. It had rained last night, the grass wet beneath his feet and the ground muddy. If he slipped, he'd fall to his death.

_ That would be nice _ .

Four centuries of life. Four centuries of playing the hero, of constantly running from his own issues and using it as leverage to fix others'. Four centuries of… whatever this was.

Four and a half, nearly. In three days, he'd hit that halfway point. Saracen had been talking about it for years, joking about what they'd do for it. 

Saracen was gone.

Dexter sat down on the ledge, his feet dangling over jagged rocks and crashing waves, so far below. 

Saracen was gone, and it was Dexter's fault.

He'd known this was coming. It only added to that pile of guilt that built inside of him, that was larger than him on some days. Since the light left his friend's eyes, it had been far, far bigger than anything else. 

Playing the hero wasn't always about saving lives. Sometimes, it was about pulling the trigger when nobody else would. 

Sometimes, it was about taking lives that nobody else  _ could _ .

Dexter shut his eyes, tipped his head back. The morning was still early, the world around him peaceful, and he felt more certain of what to do now than he had in… years. Decades? Centuries? Time was a blur when you'd lived through so much of it. 

He laughed, a brittle, broken sound ruined by his throat, the scraping feeling still painful, even now. 

Dexter Vex was tired of playing the hero, and leaned forwards.

He didn't remember his body hitting the rocks, shattering on impact, swept away by the ocean.


	3. Taking the fun out of funeral.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dexter's funeral, conspiracy theories and puppy eyes.

The funeral had been a sombre occasion, filled with a lot of people Valkyrie didn’t know, people she had a sneaking suspicion  _ Dexter _ probably didn’t know either. Lots of tears. A fair amount of wailing. Very few friends.

Dexter would have hated it.

Dimly, she was aware of Fletcher coming to stand beside her, silent and red-eyed, and it took her more will than she’d like to admit to force herself to turn and give him a smile she didn’t feel. “Hey.”

“Hey,” he responded, his eyes not quite focused on her face.

She swallowed. In all of the time she’d known Fletcher, she’d seen him like this maybe once before - Ghastly’s funeral. It was rare to see him without that stupid smirk, and the absence of it made something in Valkyrie’s gut clench.

“You’d think, with it being Dexter Vex’s funeral, there would have been a bit more… y’know.” She gestured vaguely. “Dancing. Raves. Alcohol.”

A flicker of a smile made its way onto his face, gone in an instant. “He’d have been bred out of his mind at something like this. Who even organised it? Skulduggery?”

“China, I think.” Valkyrie allowed her gaze to drift over to where the Supreme Mage stood, speaking quietly with yet another person Valkyrie didn’t know. “She’d be one to make sure it was classy.”

“Classy?  _ Dexter? _ God. I thought she knew him at least a touch better than that.”

“I’m about ninety per cent certain they used to go out, actually,” she mused, and Fletcher blinked at her.

“Only ninety? Dexter never brought that up?”

“Wait, he did?” She’d half meant it as a joke, and couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice.

Fletcher laughed quietly. “Yeah. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you.”

“I’m surprised he did tell you,” she countered, and was met with a shrug.

“He was always nice to me. I mean, when he was in Ireland, he’d usually check in with how I was doing.” 

“I didn’t know that.”

Another shrug, this one accompanied with a sheepish smile. “I mean, I never had a dad, and he was always sort of… there, y’know? It was nice to have some sort of support, or whatever. Nice to have him.”

Valkyrie studied him for a moment as he looked away, before following his gaze to the sight of Militsa’s bright curls. She had, admittedly, been surprised when Militsa said that she was coming to the funeral - that she was invited at all - but now, surrounded by a bunch of strangers, she was glad for the company of people she knew.

“Hey,” she said, smiling at her. “You took a while.”

“Well, speed-peeing has never been a super-power of mine. Hey, Fletcher.”

He gave her a smile in greeting, but his gaze wandered away again. Valkyrie reached out, squeezed his wrist gently.

“You good?”

“Nah.” He looked back, gave the two a fragile smile. “Not really.” A beat or two of silence passed before he continued. “It’s weird for me, I think. Not that, like, I’m trying to make this about me or anything, but… This all started with a funeral for me. Getting involved with magic, that sort of thing. And now it’s like… funerals just keep happening, and I feel like I can’t get close to anyone for more than five minutes without them either dying or trying to kill me.”

“Or,” Militsa mused, “doing one and then the other.”

“Coming back from the grave to murder me?” he said, frowning, and then paused. “Oh. You mean, like, the other way around. Yeah, no. Yeah. That happens too. But like… yeah. I’m not trying to make this about me, though.”

“For once,” Valkyrie teased, but there was nothing bitter in her tone. “Although, if we’re trying to drag the subject away from you, as you  _ have _ always hated talking about yourself,” She caught Fletcher’s scowl before she turned away to survey the room, “is there any point in us still being here?”

There was a beat of silence, before Fletcher said softly, “It’s Dexter’s  _ funeral _ .”

“It’s boring. We already said this.” The upbeat tone in her voice sounded more forced than she’d have liked it to, but she pushed a smile on her face to match. “Come on. He wouldn’t want us standing around doing nothing other than being mopey.”

“Thank God, someone who finally has a good idea,” came a voice from behind her, and Valkyrie turned to see Tanith, her smile turning more genuine.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” she greeted, slinging an arm around her shoulders. It hit Valkyrie, suddenly, that she needed a hug, and tried her best not to lean into it  _ too _ much.

Surprisingly, Fletcher didn’t flush or even turn away; just gave Taith a brittle smile as he and Militsa greeted her. 

Tanith’s sigh was soft. “Jesus,” she murmured, “what a dirge. Only thing convincing me that Dex is  _ actually _ dead is the fact that he hasn’t crashed the place to liven it up a little.”

Most of the words skipped over Valkyrie, but it was Militsa who frowned.

“You don’t think he’s dead?”

Tanith shrugged slightly, the movement awkward with the way she still held Valkyrie. “I mean, I don’t know. Suicide? Dexter?”

“Speaking as the resident Necromancer, I can attest to the fact that there’s a dead body in that casket,” Militsa said. “So unless they’ve pulled someone else out of the sea that looks astonishingly like him, then…”

“Okay, Jesus, this is morbid. Can we just, like, accept that he’s dead? Move on?” 

The three girls looked at Fletcher, who winced in realisation of what he’d said. “Not like that,” he amended hurriedly, “but…”

“There’s no point in hanging onto the hope that he might have survived, somehow, and faked his death or something.” Valkyrie shifted slightly.

“Yeah.” Tanith’s voice was tight, and when Valkyrie glanced at her face, she saw that her expression was…  _ sour _ , almost. “I still don’t think Dex would have killed himself.”

“That’s the thing about depression, about suicide.” Militsa’s voice was soft. “It’s not like other illnesses, where you can see death hanging over a person, waiting to snatch them away. It’s sharp and sudden and you often can’t tell. Plus, with the events of the last few years…” She trailed off, but Valkyrie heard her silent addition.  _ It’s not surprising that it sent him over the edge. _

Her mental pun made her wince, but nobody commented. Silence reigned for a while, leaving Valkyrie to think over things for a while.

The way Tanith was speaking was as if she thought something else had happened - like he’d been pushed over the edge, instead of jumping. Like he’d faked his death, as she’d said, or… 

Admittedly, it was uncharacteristic. Dexter had always been the one to do things nobody else could, and making selfish decisions just wasn’t like him - and then Valkyrie scolded herself, mentally, for considering it selfish.

God knew that she’d considered it enough for that to make her one hell of a hypocrite.

Fletcher was looking at her oddly, and it was then that she realised she was scowling. “You alright, Val?”

“No.” It came out more snappish than she’d have liked. “No, I’m not, because I don’t like the thought that my friends committed suicide and I like the thought that it might not have  _ been _ suicide even less.”

“You think it was murder or something?” MIlitsa caught on quickly, but glanced between her and Tanith with an expression Valkyrie couldn’t quite read. “Look, guys… I didn’t know Dexter, definitely nowhere near as well as you two did, but I know death. I know depression, I know that we should leave him to his death in peace.”

Valkyrie shut her eyes, let out a shaky breath,  _ almost _ wishing that she’d not decided to quit as an Arbiter so recently. China hadn’t been surprised by it, to her credit, although Valkyrie hadn’t quite been able to tell if that was due to the exhaustion plain on her face or a genuine expectance for it to happen at one stage.

China had been exhausted a lot, lately. First, it had been before they’d gone to the Leibniz dimension, where long nights filled with bad dreams had kept her awake. Then the coma she’d been forced into when the group had returned - or, more specifically, the aftermath of it, once she’d woken and seen the destruction caused by the army that had come through the portal with them.

Roarhaven was still recovering. The entirety of the magical recovery had been rocked by the very near return of Mevolent, and Valkyrie couldn’t blame them or China for being stressed out of their minds over the aftermath.

She was, secretly, glad that China was dealing with it, as bad as that made her feel. Sure, the woman was half-dead with everything on her shoulders as Supreme Mage, and had half-heartedly admitted to Valkyrie that she’d been very close to looking for Elders to help her shoulder the burden, but hadn’t mentioned names. It had left Valkyrie wondering. A lot of things had left Valkyrie wondering.

Waking China, finding out what the Faceless Church had been doing in the shadows had been her last case with Skulduggery, and she couldn’t quite help but feel as if it had been one of the many breaking points. Not so much that they couldn’t work together any more, but something about how Skulduggery seemed almost  _ eager _ to help the woman who, technically, he should hate, given what she’d done to his wife and child.

The wife and child Skulduggery refused to ever talk about, despite however many times Valkyrie had asked. And she  _ had _ \- prompted, gently hinted, bluntly voiced her questions. Each time, she’d been brushed aside or downright ignored, and more than one time she’d found herself wondering if the pair had actually existed.

They were just more ghosts in Skulduggery’s life - or lack thereof, she supposed. Just like the Dead Men. The horrible irony of the name tugged at her, and her eyes landed on where Skulduggery stood in a corner, far away from the rest of the mingling crowd. Unspeaking, unmoving. He didn’t look back, and eventually, Valkyrie tore her gaze away.

The casket, surrounded with flowers - even  _ those _ were boring as hell, completely white with no hint of colour or real variation - stood in the centre of the room, and thinking of Dexter’s corpse within it made something in Valkyrie’s gut twist. Sure, she wasn’t an Arbiter any more, but Tanith’s words had put her on edge. There was nothing illegal about her looking for her own clues on what may have happened, right?

She said as much; the others looked at her slowly. It  _ wasn’t _ illegal, right?

“No,” said Fletcher, “probably not illegal. But…”

“Look,” she cut in, “we’ve been sat here, talking about how this isn’t what Dexter would have wanted. What I’m sure he would have  _ loved _ , though, is us sent on a wild goose chase trying to figure out what happened to him, even if it  _ was  _ a suicide. He’d find it hilarious.”

Militsa looked doubtful. “Valkyrie, didn’t you give up detective work?”

“I did,” she said, shrugging with forced nonchalance, “officially. Doesn’t mean I don’t still have the skills and whatnot.” 

“Wasn’t aware you had any skills in the first place,” teased Tanith, but when Valkyrie looked at her she was smiling, slightly. “But, honestly? I’d be down for that. Even if it’s unofficial.”

“I don’t know.” Militsa sounded doubtful. “That just seems unhealthy.”

Valkyrie turned the puppy eyes on her, and was relieved to see a smile tug at the corners of the redhead’s mouth. “Come on,” she said. “And, aren’t Necromancers supposed to be all about having a happy death and whatever?”

Militsa squinted. “It’s more about avoiding death, and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Dexter’s bit beyond that now.”

“Avoiding, Schmavoiding,” she shrugged off. “Please?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she conceded, and when Valkyrie turned to Flecther, he was already smiling reluctantly.


End file.
